Return of The Phantom
by Pandoras-Closet
Summary: It has been two years since Danny Fenton last became the Phantom. Now living in New York with Sam, Danny must face an enemy he didn't know he had. One who's desire for revenge means the end of the world.


Somewhere in New York City . . .Danny Fenton wasn't very remarkable to look at. At age nineteen, he was just one more skinny, dark-haired teenager sitting on the subway. He wore jeans, an old jacket, and a T-shirt.  
However, his arm was around the shoulders of a petite, dark-haired girl clad in black and her contented expression said that if at all possible, she'd be perfectly happy to stay like that forever.  
But reality intruded, and the young couple, left the train hand in hand, and went up into the streets of New York towards the campus of the university.  
"Is something wrong, Danny?" she asked, squeezing his hand.  
"Jazz said it isn't right for me to be sitting around all day. She thinks I should get a job"  
She considered that for a moment. "So why don't you"  
"Well, I mean . . . your parents. It's not like they like me to begin with, Sam. They might think having a boyfriend who works at the grocery store or something is beneath you. What if they cut you off"  
Sam looked at him. She was wealthy. Her family was, to put it bluntly, loaded. But her parents also had some very peculiar ideas about what and what was not proper. In fact, when she told them that she AND her boyfriend would be living in the family's New York condo, her mother had fainted. So that question, coming from anyone else but Danny, she might have thought they were worried about losing what amounted to a free ride.  
But Danny was genuinely concerned that she'd be forced to drop out of school. He knew how much this meant to her and she smiled. "Danny, relax. They won't cut me off"  
"They might," Danny fretted.  
'Not unless they want to see grandchildren,' Sam thought to herself. "Then we'll adapt," she said out loud. "Plenty of other kids go to school on their own dime, so can I." She nudged him. "So can you"  
Danny sighed. "Maybe when I figure out what I want to do"  
"You've talked about being an astronaut for as long as I've known you," she said. "You'll need to be a pilot for that"  
Danny sighed, but said nothing and Sam let the matter drop. Instead, they walked in silence until they entered the campus. Around them, snippets of conversation wafted past.  
"She totally had no idea what pot was, I got her so wasted"  
"So the prof wants a fifty page paper by next Friday. Does he even read this shit or is it some kind of mind game"  
"So you hit that even though he might have herpes? What do you mean it was dark so you weren't sure"  
"Man, the Ghostbusters were in the law library last week kicking ecto ass! They are dope, y'hear"  
Danny's head jerked around at that. "Ghostbusters"  
The speaker nodded. "Yo, man, the Ghostbusters. Manhattan's dopest crew. They make the Charmed babes look like charmed bitches"  
"They are bitches," Sam noted, triggering howls of laughter.  
"I've never heard of them," Danny admitted.  
"You will if you stay in New York long enough. My man Garret runs with their crew and they know their shit. Stay cool, man. Girl, you stay pretty"  
"Maybe you should go see if the Ghostbusters are hiring," Sam joked as they reached the library. "Fighting ghosts is something you know how to do, after all." She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him. "You have your toothbrush kit"  
Danny patted his pocket. "Never leave home without it." Sam was a militant vegetarian, but Danny was an unrepetant omnivore. So if Danny ate meat, he did so when she wasn't around, and thoroughly cleaned his mouth afterwards. In return, Sam didn't say anything. It was a compromise, but relationships were often built on those.  
"Good. Meet me back here for dinner at nine and then we'll go home." She pulled him down for another kiss and whispered. "I'm not planning on studying tonight"  
Danny's face flushed as he watched her enter the building. When she was gone, he started walking again. Normally he would just wander the campus until it was time to pick Sam up and go home, but her comment about the Ghostbusters was preying on his brain.  
Finally, he stopped at a pay phone and flipped through the phone book. Couldn't hurt to go down and ask.

* * *

The neighborhood was far from pretty looking, but Danny had considerably less to fear from such a place than most. Wandering the streets, he found the address, an old-fashioned brick and mortar firehouse on a corner. The sign over the doors was a cartoon of what Danny thought might be a ghost in a red circle with a line through it.  
He shrugged and pushed open the door.  
The inside of the firehouse was almost empty. Lockers on the left hand side, what looked like equipment cabinets on the right. Straight ahead, a woman wearing glasses sat behind a massive desk reading a magazine. "Can I help you?" She asked without looking up.  
"Uh, I was wondering if you we're hiring?" Danny said, moving closer.  
She set down her magazine. "Hiring?" She seemed almost amused.  
"Well yeah," Danny said. "I mean, I heard some people talking about you guys, and my folks had all these books, so I know a lot about ghosts, so I figured I'd try"  
"Hmm," she blew a bubble of gum and then snapped it. "You got a name, kid"  
"Danny Fenton," Danny replied and then waited. He'd learned long ago that the name Fenton was considered a joke by most people into the Paranormal. Not that he could blame them, but Danny wasn't about to make something up either. Even if Danny Manson sounded pretty good.  
"Fenton . . ." she mused, "How many classes of ghosts are there"  
"Ten." Danny replied immeditly, and then remembered something. "Though the Spengler Scale says twelve. The last two for demigod and god level entities"  
She raised an eyebrow at that. "Subclasses"  
"Fifteen. On both"  
"Name the Sumerian God known as the Traveler"  
"Gozer"  
She rested her elbows on the desk, fingers steepled and stared at him. "Name his earth minions, their titles and the head of the most recent cult to worship Gozer"  
"Zuul the Gatekeeper, Vinz Clortho the Keymaster, and Doctor Evo Shandor"  
"Huh." She seemed impressed. "The theory of Atlantis"  
"Fey City built by worshippers of Vulcan, also called Hestaphus. It sank when the Fey and the humans were fighting. Lemuria had nothing to do with it"  
"Hm. You believe in aliens"  
"I guess"  
She laughed out loud. "Good enough. I'm Janine Spengler and I run the office here at Ghostbusters Inc. I could use an assistant. Mostly answering phones, sorting mail, that stuff. Part time for now, nine bucks an hour. Sound good"  
"Sure!" Danny said and shook her hand. "When can I start"  
"You doing anything important at the moment?" Danny grinned. "I am now," he said.  
"Good answer. Just one more thing." She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. "Yo! Slimer"  
Danny put one hand to his mouth and coughed to dissipate the blue smoke that came from his mouth.  
"Aiiyahmaribeeblah!" A flying green blob rocketed down the stairs and stopped at the edge of the desk.  
"This is Slimer," Janine said. "He's our mascot and resident helper. Mind your food around him. He eats pretty much anything"  
"Migarrabablumi," Slimer protested.  
"A three-foot submarine sandwich!" Janine exclaimed, slapping the desk with her hand. "Last week! MY three-foot submarine sandwich"  
"Pumiumrya," Slimer replied, looking apologetic.  
"Whatever. Slimer, this is Danny Fenton. He'll be helping me out around here"  
"AIiiimyah," Slimer exclaimed and gave Danny a hug before zooming off, leaving Danny covered in slime.  
"Sorry about that," Janine said, "Slimer has a hard time with things like restraint"  
"It's okay," Danny said and looked around for a bathroom.  
"That door over there. Don't worry, his slime comes off fairly easily"  
Danny nodded and went to wash off. When he returned, Janine indicated a stack of folders. "The file room's through there." She pointed. "Everything's alphabetical"  
Danny nodded and went to work.

* * *

When he emerged from the file room, there was an old fashioned ambulance parked in the middle of the room and six people were getting out. Two of them were much older men, the others were teenagers about Danny's age.  
"Who are you?" asked one of the older men.  
"This is Danny Fenton," Janine replied. "I hired him part time to give me a hand around here"  
"I see he met Slimer," observed one of the teenagers, no, she was a pale-skinned young woman who reminded him a little of Sam.  
"Janine, you don't need help"  
"I am six months pregnant, Peter Venkman!" Janine snapped, standing up and planting both hands on the desk. The desk had hid her pregnancy very well, Danny noted, and then realized maybe that had been the point. "Six months! With twins! Do not tell me what I need and don't need!" She exhaled noisely through clenched teeth and sat back down in the chair.  
"This is your doing, you know," Peter said to the other man before he and the others left the room.  
"Fenton," said the man. "Any relation to Jack Fenton"  
"My dad," Danny said. "But I'm not crazy"  
"I see." The man took some kind of device from his belt and pointed it at him. It hummed and beeped rapidly. Whatever that meant, the man seemed satisfied and put the device back on his belt. "I'm Egon Spengler, I'll show you around"  
"No testing on my assistant, Egon," Janine said as they walked away. "You have Venkman for that"  
The next hour or so was lengthy, but interesting. Egon showed Danny the basement containment unit and how to empty the traps. The main floor held the offices and maintenance supplies for the Ecto-3, the big white car parked in front of Janine's desk. The second floor was a combination gym, lounge, and lab for Egon and Ray Stanz, who wasn't in at the moment. He also got to meet, Kylie, Roland, Garret and Eduardo, former students of Egon's who now worked as Team B, while Egon, Peter, Ray and some guy named Winston, who was also out, were Team A. The schedules were such that there was always at least four Ghostbusters in the Firehouse per shift. The third floor was where Egon and Janine lived.  
The lab technician was Oscar Venkman, who Danny took an immediate liking to.  
When the tour was over, Danny went back down to Janine, who had him sign a bunch of tax forms, non-disclosure agreements, and liability statements and then showed him how to handle the phones, take appointments, and told him stories about ghostbusting, many of which had him in stitches.  
All too soon, it was six p.m. and Danny hurried back to the university to meet Sam for dinner.

* * *

Sam and Danny were joined for dinner joined by some of her study buddies. As they ate, Danny kept them entertained by telling some of the stories Janine had told him.  
"So Venkman takes Peck back into his office, and Peck wants to see the storage facility. Venkman tells him no and Peck is all 'why not"  
"What did he say?" asked Epona Harper, a med student.  
Danny grinned. "Well remember, Peck thinks Venkman's crazy, right?" Everyone nodded. "And Venkman knows Peck thinks he's crazy, so with a straight face, Venkman says 'You didn't say the magic word.' Peck then leans on the desk smiles, and says 'And what is the magic word, Doctor Venkman?'" Everyone leaned forward and Danny paused for a few seconds to let the suspense build, just as Janine had done and then spoke. "Venkman looks him right in the eye and says 'please"  
The table erupted in howls of laughter.  
"He didn't!" Sam gasped.  
Danny nodded. "He did. Janine says Peck still occasionally files lawsuits to have the Ghostbusters shut down, but the courts throw them out. Venkman keeps the papers in a folder marked jokes"  
More laughter.  
"And on that note," Sam said, "Danny and I should be getting home"  
"Going to study biology?" one of the others teased.  
"No," Sam said with a toss of her head. "Anatomy." She winked at them and then she and Danny went home.

* * *

Home was a five bedroom condo on Park Avenue. Sam's family used it for trips to New York, but those were few and far between, so when Sam had gotten into NYU, she'd been handed the keys and told to live there, rather than on campus. Sam didn't mind the commute too much, and the view was to die for.  
As they entered and Sam set her bag on the couch, Danny stretched.  
"Do you really like your new job?" Sam asked.  
"Yeah, actually. Everyone's nice, and Janine tells great stories. You'd really like Kylie, and . . ." Danny trailed off as Sam rubbed his head. It felt really good and then she turned him around and pressed herself against him. "Er, Sam"  
"You know," she said, leading him over to the patch of moonlight from the window and sliding her hands under his shirt, "employed boyfriends are incredibly, wonderfully, sexy"  
They both got to bed quite late.  
The next morning, Danny got up and made tea for Sam, and juice for himself. Sam cooked breakfast and they sat together on the couch and watched Today while eating and making fun of Matt Lauer's buzzcut.  
Then Sam rushed off to school for her morning classes while Danny played video games until ten when he went to work.  
They soon fell into a comfortable routine. Wake up, breakfast, shower, Sam to school, Danny to work, meet Sam at school and go home.  
By the end of his first month, Danny could run the office as well as Janine could and she admitted that she'd been training him to be her replacement for when the babies arrived. Danny didn't mind, he was enjoying himself. He even learned enough to be an extra pair of hands for Ray, Egon and Oscar, who were forever tinkering in the second floor lab.  
Janine juggled the schedule so Danny could walk Sam home after dark, but he still occasionally drew the night card. This meant sitting at Janine's desk and waiting for any night calls. Oscar, who lived a few blocks away and was a chronic insomniac, often came in to keep Danny company, bringing with him a case of Pepsi, and an Xbox. They would roll the twenty-inch TV out from Dr. Venkman's office and pass the hours playing video games, drinking soda, and talking.  
"So wait," Danny said on one such night. Team B was out on a night call and Egon and Janine had long since gone to bed. "You were possessed"  
"Well going to be," Oscar said. "See, this Vigo guy was pretty much immortal, but he didn't have a body. So because Mom's boss at the museum had a crush on her and was working for Vigo, he decided to possess me"  
Danny shook his head. "So how did they beat him"  
"Would you believe positively-charged slime and Jackie Wilson"  
Danny lost it, dropping his controller and doubling over with laughter.  
"It gets better," Oscar said. "According to Dad, he and the others coated the inside of the Statue of Liberty with positive slime and then hooked up an old NES controller"  
"Stop, stop!" Danny gasped.  
"They played Jackie Wilson tapes while walking the statue, literally making it walk from Ellis Island all the way to the Art Museum, smashed in the glass ceiling, and roped in like commandos to beat Vigo while all of New York sang Auld Lang Syne, which generated enough positive energy that Vigo imploded"  
Danny fell off his chair, he was laughing so hard.  
"That has to be the funniest thing I've ever heard," Danny gasped, pulling himself back into his chair. "Positively-charged slime. Jeez"  
"It's true," Oscar insisted. "The old Grand Central station under First Avenue still has a river of the stuff flowing down the track"  
"You are so making this up," Danny accused, pointing a finger at his friend. "Completly making it up"  
Oscar gave him a look of mock innocence. "Am not"  
At that moment, the radio crackled to life with Eduardo's voice. "Code Ecto! Code Ecto, damnit! It's a class nine PKE but it's shrugging off the streams." A pause and then they heard Garrett yelling something in the background. "Shit! It's got Kylie! We need backup! Now"  
"Oh, hell," Oscar swore. "Slimer"  
"Aiyahh?" The green ghost came through the wall.  
"Get Egon! Code Ecto! Danny, come with me!" Slimer let out a screech and shot through the ceiling like a bullet.  
"What's Code Ecto?" Danny asked as they ran over to the lockers. Oscar wrenched open one and threw a Ghostbusters coverall at Danny.  
"Put this on! What's your shoe size"  
"Uh, nine wide"  
"Nine and a half, close enough." A pair of combat boots landed at Danny's feet. "Code Ecto is bad"  
"How bad?" Danny asked, lacing up the boots.  
"Possibly the end of the world"  
"Oh, hell," Danny moaned.  
"Bingo. So rest of us, better known as Team C, gets suited up for one. Janine would suit up too, but she can't, obviously"  
Egon came hurrying down the stairs, zipping up a coverall, followed by Slimer who was wearing a much smaller version of the proton packs. Danny thought that a little odd, but he'd learned that the Ghostbusters were a tightly knight family and Slimer was unquestionably a member of that family. That, and the floating green blob seemed to enjoy helping. "Janine is calling the others," Egon continued as he threw a set of keys at Oscar. "Get the van. Danny, help me bring up the packs"  
Within minutes, The four of them were racing through the streets and Danny got a quick lesson in using a proton pack.  
"The cartridges have a ten minute sustained charge time," Oscar said. "Theoretically, anyway"  
"Theoretically"  
"There was the beginnings of a meltdown at seven twenty-nine," Egon said. "These are essentially small, self-contained fusion reactors with nuclear accelerators, after all"  
Danny stared at the pack and swallowed. "And you guys run around with these things on your back"  
Oscar grinned at him. "Yeah! Great, aint it"  
Danny had no answer as they arrived at the warehouse. Ecto-3 was already parked out front and the NYPD was keeping onlookers at bay.  
"Oscar, take Danny and Slimer inside and see what you can do," Egon said. "I'll brief the others when they arrive and then we'll join you"  
"Check," Oscar said and they entered. "Slimer, find Roland and Garret and make sure they're okay"  
"Yah!" Slimer said and took off. Oscar and Danny moved through the maze of crates and boxes, following the sounds of proton beam fire. They found Eduardo hunched over behind a huge wall of crates listening to the beam fire.  
"So what happened?" Oscar asked.  
"No idea, man," Eduardo replied. "That ghost, it's like, wearing armor, you know? Shrugs off proton beams like nothing." He pointed at a gap between two crates. "See for yourself"  
Oscar looked first. "That is one ugly mother. Danny, check this guy out"  
Danny looked and felt his heart skip a beat. The ghost stood eight and a half feet tall, was clad in burnished steel armor, and through the faceplate of his helmet, his face glowed green, and his eyes red. He held Kylie against him and her proton blaster was fused directly to his gauntlet.  
"Skulker!" Danny exclaimed.

* * *

Author's Note: There were plans for a third Ghostbusters movie, but they never took off. Instead, the produceers refashioned the plot, in which the boys hand over the proton packs to a new generation, into the series Extreme Ghostbusters. So there's your trivia for the day.  
As far as the timelines are concerned, I'm using the following chain of events; Ghostbusters 1 and then Real Ghostbusters. Five years after the end of Real Ghostbusters is Ghostbusters 2. Oscar, who is about a year old in GB2, is around 20 in this fic, and Kylie, Roland, Eduardo and Garret have been Ghostbusters for two years. 


End file.
